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Asked by anon-282519 to Abi on 11 Mar 2021.
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Abigail Fiske answered on 11 Mar 2021:
Hi Skye, thank-you for your great question! It did make me giggle a little as there are lots of ‘strange’ things that babies are capable of.
One example I can think of is when we are completing a task (a game) with the babies to test their memory, we hide some toys in a magic box and secretly take some out without the baby knowing. So the baby sees us put three toys in the box, but we secretly take one out so there are only two toys in the box. If the baby has a good memory, they keep searching for the third toy and become very curious or cross when they can’t find it. Sometimes they look under the table for the toy, they pick the box up, look on the floor. In a very strange way, this behaviour tells us a lot about the babies memory capacity – and that they have formed a representation of the toy in their brain.
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Comments
laurenmcgale commented on :
I always loved learning about human development, in particular, how babies can detect and recognise human faces, and how they are even drawn to ‘fake’ faces, or drawings/things that look like faces at an early age – it is fascinating to see how they are programmed to spot them. There are some really old studies that show that babies are actually drawn to more attractive faces too, so when babies are staring at you on the bus, it’s because they like your face (well that’s what I like to believe anyway, it makes me feel better!).